Homepage Calendar Update

Posted on November 27, 2006

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The ACC homepage uses the calendar service from ActiveDataExchange to generate the calendar listings. The application is fairly robust and has many features we were looking for including the export function. One of the issues with it though was either getting the service installed to the “www” server or having it remotely hosted at Active Data Exchange and just querying their server instead, and adding the hosting charge on to our bill. Knowing the path of least resistance, I suggested hosting it remotely. We would have support and updates and the calendar would reside in a place where it would be totally disconnected from any ACC web-service. (If you click on any calendar listing now you will notice you are not even on the ACC website). The only problem with this is the combination of the javascript pinging a remote server and rendering html to another would during heavy usage periods (early morning and lunch) make the homepage hang when loading the calendar. As a solution we wrote a combination of javascript and php that caches the rendered html in an external file and then pulls it into the homepage. The result is the absence of the ping of the external server and a load time that is independent of an external server. Even if the remote server at ActiveDataExchange goes down the scripts pick it up and insert a notification message to the user. So now you can pound your refresh button and the calendar will load in exactly the same time each time depending on your internet connection and the ACC server response.